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The Cities of the Future Are Smart, Green, Connected Innovation Hubs
Humanity has come a long way since the very first cities began to emerge about ten thousand years ago. Today, places like New York, Tokyo and Dubai are centers of innovation and human progress. Urban projects globally are pushing the limits of engineering, design and architecture. Exponential technologies are being integrated into the very skeleton of human civilization. Above all, we are seeing an emergence of futuristic societies with an inspiring vision for humanity.
From the man-made Palm Islands in Dubai to the Shanghai tower in China, cities are home to the world’s most impressive engineering feats. They continue to compete with one another for taller skyscrapers, faster transportation systems and cleaner energy sources.
Exponential technologies are revolutionizing the future of infrastructure and disrupting the construction industry in the process. Dubai recently announced the opening of the first ever 3D printed office, and Amsterdam may soon be home to the first ever 3D printed bridge. With greater convenience, innovative design capabilities and reduced waste, 3D printing may dramatically bring down the cost of quality infrastructure. Given that funding has been a major bottleneck for enabling better infrastructure in many countries, including the US, this could be a liberating tool.
Smart cities
Another major force that will transform the urban landscape is the emergence of the Internet of Things. City-wide systems would use wireless signals to gather data from objects like trash cans, lights and even entire buildings. In a project entirely crowdsourced by citizens, Amsterdam is set to implement “The Things Network”, joining Taipei and Brasilia to become one of many emerging smart cities.
The applications of such “smart” cities are revolutionary. Many big players such as IBM and Cisco are developing data-driven systems for urban planning, transportation, energy, law enforcement and much more. Barcelona alone has experienced a $58 million annual savings by using smart water meters. Imagine the potential if this kind of data-driven technology was applied to every city in the world, in every possible domain. City officials could plan for efficient energy usage, optimal transportation and minimal pollution levels.
Naturally, many concerns have been raised about privacy and autonomy with the overflow of information. Big city data will certainly transform official urban decision-making and even how politicians choose to interact with their citizens. While there is certainly value for the big data from cities to improve the lives of its citizens, it may also serve as an exploitable tool to private organizations and marketing agencies.
With the rise of technology comes increasing mobilization. Many prototypes of self-driving cars are already being tested in California and autonomous transport pods are running in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. This increasing mobilization is expected both within and between major cities in the world. Perhaps one of the most anticipated projects is Elon Musk’s hyperloop, a 500mph train that will travel between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two cities in the United Arab Emirates 120 kilometers apart, in less than 12 minutes.
The increased connectedness between cities is not only a matter of physical mobility, but digital awareness as well. Dennis Frenchman, from the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has said, “Digital technology has put a nervous system into the planet, so we can actually feel the pain in China. This is a global level of consciousness and interdependence that we just never had before.” It is clear that world’s cities are becoming increasingly interconnected, both physically and digitally.
A greener future
As climate change becomes a growing threat against our species, humanity is faced with significant decisions. Many cities are integrating multiple solutions that involve sustainable infrastructure, cleaner transportation and renewable energy sources.
In the realm of renewable energy, the price of solar power alone is dropping to unprecedented lows. The cost of solar panels is expected to fall by 10 percent every year. In some countries, wind energy is a cheaper source than coal. Many cities are embracing these trends and integrating them into their urban development. Copenhagen, the most eco-friendly city in the world, is set to be carbon neutral by 2025, leading the way for all other major cities to follow in its footsteps.
In Abu Dhabi, Masdar City is one of the first zero-carbon, zero-emission and zero-car cities. One of its many notable features is a 45-meter-high wind tower that keeps desert temperatures as low as 20C when it’s 35C in other parts of the country. This is a step towards climate-controlled cities. The city is also designed to be a hub for innovative cleantech companies and clean energy research facilities.
The “greenification” of cities is also being led by the emergence of vertical farms. These vertical forests aren’t only aesthetically pleasing, they solve a crucial problem. By the year 2050, two thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities, and as the global population continues to increase, more land will be required to feed them.
Vertical farming could be a solution for cities to grow sustainably, with advantages like increased crop production and energy sustainability. Developers from many local governments around the world, including New York, Paris and Bangalore have expressed interest in integrating vertical farming projects within their cities.
Future societies
Cities are considered to be the center of development. As technological growth allows for an increased quality of life, access to resources and inter-connectedness, we will see an acceleration in innovation. This innovation may not simply be technological, but societal as well. Research has consistently shown that bigger, denser, and more affluent cities are some of the more tolerant places in the world. Cities are known to be the places most welcome to immigrants, artists and institutions. Cities from San Diego to London are investing in innovation hubs, which not only create jobs and boost the economy, but also integrate the very culture of innovation into their communities.
Above all, cities demonstrate that any goal within the laws of physics is possible. They continue to push the boundaries of human progress in all domains, whether it be creative, technological or societal. Pushing these boundaries will undoubtedly have a profound impact on citizens’ mindsets. The prime minister of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said it best: “The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. It isn’t something you await, but rather create.”
27 Comments on "The Cities of the Future Are Smart, Green, Connected Innovation Hubs"
Dredd on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 6:13 am
There are no cities where there is no future.
Listen to the canary body language (Polar Sea Ice Trend At Both Poles – 3).
Cloggie on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 6:32 am
Most on this forum are green-left and as such hate industrial civilization and somehow want to “go back to nature”, under the inspiring leadership of Chief Seattle.
In doing so they underestimate the immense potential of technology, for better and for worse.
P.S.: never heard of a 3D-printed bridge in Amsterdam before:
http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/MX3D-heijman-3Dbridge-designboom-01-818×551.jpg
https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2015/mx3disto3dpr.jpg
(When are they going to finish it or don’t they trust the carrying capacity?)
makati1 on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 7:15 am
Cities of the future are crumbling slums filled with rats, and human vermin. Another wet dream by the techie crowd. Not a hint of reality in their lives. Not a bit. lol
Hubert on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 7:16 am
THE FUTURE OF CITIES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOWk5yCMMs&t=4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szktRPHI1U8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2_KTWt6C0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwYnkXQFiKQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD7PjFH5ZMc&t=63s
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 8:56 am
How will these people react when they understand that their Utopian pipe dreams ran smack into overshoot and limits to growth? Elect a Trump to fix it?
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 9:04 am
clog, can you provide examples of these green lefty’s? I think, once again, you are seeing what you want to see and you do not seem to grasp what it means to be political like you. It means to advocate for change towards a particular ideology. I don’t see much of that around here. You are confusing peoples opinion that industrial civilization is a failure with their advocating for a alternative route when most are not doing that. Like all zealots you must paint anyone and everyone who disagrees with your politics “the enemy” – black & white thinking writ large. There is no room in your tiny world view for the growing number of folks who see the corporate consumer capitalism as worthless and lost regardless of which manager, left or right, happens to be managing. Care to explain why it can’t be possible that everything is fucked and there are no realistic choices anymore? A lose lose situation. Me, I never advocate for change. I’m descriptive – not prescriptive. I’ll let all the little monkey’s like you huff and puff and get all worked up trying to attract converts to you belief system. The closest I get to advocating anything is to suggest to people that they might want to get their heads straight for whats coming, but I am neither right or wrong. If one is more or less content with their life, then maybe it’s best to live in a state of total denial until the shit hits hard. I just don’t know. Do you ever say that about anything? I just don’t know? One thing I’m pretty sure of is anyone who is a regular on this site or any that is doomer related are unlikely to believe in a decent future regardless of what they claim to believe. What would be the point of arguing with a teeny tiny insignificant minority of doomers if you thought they were completely wrong? The cornucopian doth protest too much.
Don’t forget todays lesson old man. To be political one must advocate for change. One must claim my tribe is better – our ways are best. Just because folks say your hero Cheeto is a fuck head does not make them commies or whatever else you happen to pull out of your grab bag of labels. You’re 72 and you still have a simpletons view of the world and the people in it. The world is gray and it’s only all that propaganda and your emotional needs that paint it, and everyone in it, either black or white.
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 9:15 am
Cloggie hasn’t come to terms with the fact that humanity has tried just about everything, including his fascist, white superiority, racial purity thingy, and humanity has eventually failed at all of these attempts to get along with itself. BIG FAT FAIL, because our lizard brains don’t grok limits.
penury on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 9:47 am
Cities of the future, what will they be like? Like Detroit? Or possibly worse. Tech will not save humanity, too late That which cannot continue, will not.
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:01 am
I find these singularity people and their magical thinking to be obscene. There is a great dying of life on this planet underway and human existence relies on a great number of other species, plant & animal. All the species rely on other species and when enough go extinct, the web of life collapses.
Somalia Faces Unprecedented Drought
“Herds of animals are dying across Somalia following two failed rainy seasons. Here in Somaliland, at least 40 percent of goats and sheep have perished, amounting to more than 10 million animals.”
http://www.voanews.com/a/somalia-faces-unprecedented-drought/3732497.html
Tasmanian kelp forests dying as water warms, dive operator Mick Baron says
“He described the situation as the disappearance of a natural reserve.
“The devastation of the forest is I believe … a national disaster,” he said.”
“Twenty-five years ago when we started the dive centre, there was kelp everywhere,” he said.
“You took it for granted; now, as of the summer last year, we have none.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-21/tasmanian-kelp-forests-dying-as-water-warms-dive-operator-says/8289300
Jef on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:02 am
The problem has always been that these great concrete, aluminum, and glass mega cities have always been sold to us as an amazing, inevitable future paradise.
In truth they are sterile, lifeless receptacles incapable of sustaining life.
We always think of these things strictly in terms of man, humans, homowhatererus. There is no human without all the other elements of all of life on Earth.
Sissyfuss on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:17 am
Clogs’ mind is is trapped in modernity and he proselytizes for the maintaining of BAU in whatever tech du jour that presents itself. A wise warrior said that man is so enmeshed in his human based reality that he can’t see the forest for the dying trees. Without a basic relationship with Nature, all is permitted, all is righteous if done for the progress of mankind.
Jerry McManus on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:21 am
Gotta love those singularity folks. The cognitive dissonance in their heads must be deafening, literally off the dial.
I’m sure there will be a few wealthy folks in the years ahead that will be able to afford something that at least looks like a “smart green city”.
No doubt they will be frantically patting each other on the back with manic grins on their faces as they desperately try to ignore the billions of starving and enraged masses at their door.
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:27 am
Jerry said; “I’m sure there will be a few wealthy folks in the years ahead that will be able to afford something that at least looks like a “smart green city”.”…..
…..until they figure out it’s just a target.
TheNationalist on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:33 am
Here in Australia our litigious society is the major block to progress. A small plane crash yesterday that killed five people is the worst aviation accident in Melbourne for 30years. This is enough for the fake news and the uneducated hysterical masses to call for the airport to be closed. The urban sprawl in Melbourne is filling all the airport clear ways with mega malls and car parks and that is now ‘risky’ for the chattering class.
Meanwhile this is the same ‘demographic’ that wants flying Uber cars etc but they don’t see their doom and gloom mentality is the biggest hurdle.
A bit like you lot perhaps?
*Ghung , could you check my post for errors please (spelling and ideological)
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:48 am
Spelling is OK. I would suggest your content is bogged down in the collapse of complex societies. Everything you mention is merely an artifact of that process.
“Collapse now and avoid the rush.”
GregT on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:57 am
“How will these people react when they understand that their Utopian pipe dreams ran smack into overshoot and limits to growth?”
Somehow I doubt that they ever will understand, they’ll be too busy pointing fingers at everybody else. Kind of like what we’re seeing the beginnings of already, only much worse.
Glad I got out of Dodge.
Anonymous on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 11:52 am
New York, Tokyo and Dubai are centers of innovation and human progress.
ROFL
Jew York is so expensive most of the people who live there, cant afford to live there. Its polluted, congested and the only thing it leads innovation in, is financial fraud and neo-liberal propaganda.
Dubai, built with slave labor, a monument to excess and waste, and totally unsuited forms and scale of construction for the desert.
. Between the salt water, and the desert, once the power fails, Dubai would disintegrate with record speed. If not for an army of barely paid imported slaves, and cheap subsidized energy, the place would literally fall apart.
(But it sure looks pretty doesn’t it?)
Tokyo. About the only ‘green’ you will find there is a couple of parks and the emperor’s palace. Some of the densest urban sprawl on the planet. Completely reliant on imported energy. Also suffers from heavy pollution and constant congestion.
The fact the writer thinks those three places are templates for the ‘future(tm)’, only shows how tenuous his connection with reality is. Sounds like something cloggotard would come up with.
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 11:55 am
Greg, I agree that most will never understand and the finger pointing will eventually turn to violence. From my point of view it’s all evolutionary. Why you and I and a small number of folks have managed to see the obvious is beyond me. I guess that it is some fluke combination of brain wiring and environment – nature-nurture. I think there may be a flight or flight element in there too. One of my ex’s, somewhat angrily, use to ask me “why do you always have to know that stuff?” I could never give her a reasonable answer, ‘I just do honey, I just do.’
In case anyone missed it.
WHY FACTS DON’T CHANGE OUR MINDS
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
Mind Over Reality Theory
“The likely mechanism for how denial of mortality reality is implemented in the brain makes it quite broad in scope which means that humans tend to deny anything they find unpleasant, and also tend to have an optimism bias.
Denial is not a defect. Denial is what made us human.
Denial now prevents us from acknowledging and changing behavior that threatens our long-term survival and therefore denial may destroy us.”
https://un-denial.com/denial-2/theory-short/
I guess I still have my denier moments too. For example, I’m really not the sexiest man on the planet – I’m actually tied for fourth sexiest with some young surfer dude from Australia (I hope he wipes out badly or a shark gets him. He don’t need to die, just a scarred up face will do) There I admitted my denial. Behold my humility and wonder!
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:17 pm
Apneaman said; ““The fact the writer thinks those three places are templates for the ‘future(tm)’, only shows how tenuous his connection with reality is.”
He’s a She. Seems males don’t have a monopoly on delusion these days. Gender equality is a bitch.
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:20 pm
“Raya is an entrepreneur and science communicator. She is the co-founder of Intelligent Optimism, a social media movement that serves to get people excited about the future in a rational way. Raya is interested in the ethical and existential implications of exponential technologies on society.”
I wish I could say that’s funny…..
Anonymous on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:25 pm
I stand corrected, and ape didn’t make that comment. So now you’re corrected as well.
Ghung on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:31 pm
Sorry, Ape. Not really relevant to the article I guess, but thanks anyway. I just get tired of men getting blamed for everything. Almost everything would be pretty accurate…..
Antius on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:09 pm
Not sure what this smart city thing is all about. The concept appears to be a vague mix of ideas. Is it some attempt at bringing back the pedestrian cities of yesteryear? Not a bad concept in many ways. But the problem is we are stuck with the infrastructure that we have got. And there isn’t enough cash or energy left to rework it in any sensible timescale. So what do we do?
Antius on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:23 pm
‘Somehow I doubt that they ever will understand, they’ll be too busy pointing fingers at everybody else. Kind of like what we’re seeing the beginnings of already, only much worse.
Glad I got out of Dodge.’
I have often thought the same thing. Where I live in the UK, a lot of conversations end up being bitching sessions, about how much money other people have, how much goes to useless welfare leeches, whether Brexit will sink tye economy and all sorts of other small scale nonsense. Very few people are capable of grasping the big picture – that things are turning to crap because there isn’t enough low cost energy to keep the wealth generating machine going.
When I talk about stuff like that its like I am talking a foreign language to people. Whereas benefit leeches will always generate a lively conversation, voicing the simple fact that we are running out of rotten dinosaur juice, tends to generate long silences.
Anonymous on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 11:28 pm
There are many problems with the author’s reasoning of course, as most of us here seem to grasp. But here is something else I would ask her if I could
Why exactly, do we need to wait for the future(tm), to get something like cities she seems to think are on their way?
We could have, built something approximating these ‘smart-green’ cities if we had wished to do so. We have, or had at least, all the necessary resources to build far better cities than the ones all of us actually live in. ‘We’ choose not to. Instead, ‘we’ built the ones we have now. So I’m not sure what the author thinks will happen in the ‘future'(tm) to change this dynamic even IF unlimited resources to build such cities existed(they don’t of course.)
I think its worth pointing out, ‘we’ could have done everything above, or again, something like it, pretty much at any point. It certainly wasn’t for lack of know-how, or wealth, or some unspecified piece of ‘tech we were waiting for to hop off the lab bench and into the world. But the system’s managers had other ideas and priorities,so we got the cities THEY(tm), wanted to build instead.
GregT on Wed, 22nd Feb 2017 9:08 am
Antius,
” that things are turning to crap because there isn’t enough low cost energy to keep the wealth generating machine going.”
Mankind lived, and flourished, for hundreds of thousands of years without ‘low cost energy’. In less than 300 years, that same said energy has allowed us to cause irreversible damage to every single natural ecosystem on our one and only ever life support system, the planet Earth. And you are concerned with keeping the very thing going that is leading not only our species down the road to extinction, but all life as we currently know it? I would consider that to be a very large negative.
Sissyfuss on Wed, 22nd Feb 2017 10:26 am
Well said, Greg.